


whatever here that's left of me is yours, just as it was

by 105ttt, violetinfidel



Category: Cookie Run (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Human, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23658748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/105ttt/pseuds/105ttt, https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetinfidel/pseuds/violetinfidel
Summary: [only the prologue to the full story is posted so far! the summary, the tags and the characters will be updated to reflect that as chapters are posted - tumblrs are @105ttt and @violetinfidel ]Dark Enchantress isn't satisfied with only being a deity - she wants to be THE deity, and it's this ambition which leads her to her exile from the pantheon and, ironically, to the loss of her power. But the method that had stripped her of her powers wasn't as thorough as intended, and she's left with a fraction of her former strength, nowhere near how she used to be, but just enough to be a threat, if she's smart about it; but her clock is ticking, so to speak, because now without her powers, her remaining lifespan is no longer than a normal human's. And she wants revenge on the deity who did this to her, even if that means tearing apart the world and everything in it to get to him.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	whatever here that's left of me is yours, just as it was

**Author's Note:**

> this is just the prologue to an entire fic!! this gives some background as to why dark enchantress does what she does as the antagonist in the coming chapters, and writing the deities fighting is fun :)

If he had handled it more carefully, maybe it wouldn’t have ended the way it did, but as it is, Dark Enchantress’ fall from grace is messy. 

She’s only younger than Millennial Tree by a few centuries, generations to the humans but the mere blink of an eye to deities such as themselves, but somehow in those few centuries he establishes himself as the authority figure of the pantheon, and he is singularly unwilling to negotiate that.

He comes to her soon after she’s realized, born from some fundamental flaw of the human condition that Millennial Tree was unable (or unwilling) to correct. At first she doesn’t understand her own power- it’s difficult to do so, being so new and inexperienced in the world- and she walks among the mortals as a mortal, unaware of any alternative, and maybe it’s this that changes her.

But Millennial Tree approaches her one day, and she’s never seen him before, but she recognizes on sight that he’s different from the humans she’s been around, different in a way that resonates with her.

“You’ve hidden yourself well,” Millennial Tree says, guiding her gently to the outskirts of the small civilization she’s been investigating. The settlement is crowded, but people drift out of their way subconsciously, and their passage is easy.

“I was never hiding,” Dark Enchantress- that’s yet to become her name, but it’s what she becomes, later- tells him. She isn’t lying: the thought had never occurred to her that she might have a reason to hide. “Who are you? And why do you think that you can speak to me that way?”

Millennial Tree accepts her scorn with patience. “You may call me Millennial Tree. I thought we might speak as equals, being what we are.”

“And what exactly is that?”

“Gods,” He says, in the same casual matter-of-fact tone that one might remark upon the weather in. “You were unaware?”

“I’m afraid I never gave it much thought.” That might explain some things- her lifespan, for example, which has so far managed to outlast five human generations. “Is it just you?”

“I’m certain there are more, waiting.” He looks pensive. “I’m trying to find them. Or free them, as the case may be. I’m only just figuring things out, myself.”

She nods. That makes sense- the land may be old, but the people are new, and the land doesn’t need gods. 

“How did you find me?”

“Call it intuition.” He looks fondly upon the people navigating through the crooked alleys between the rough shelters. “I’d like to ask you to join me.”

“In what?”

“I’m not sure.” Millennial Tree looks completely at peace with not knowing. “I have the feeling that people like us might need to be cohesive, in the future. They have… potential.”

She’s been aware of this too: it’s something that pulls at her each time she interacts with a human, a thread that tugs at something in her, as if begging her to tug back. She doesn’t know what it means, or what it might do, and she’s a little afraid to try, but it’s always been tempting just the same.

“And you want to…”

“Guide it, maybe,” Millennial Tree says. “I’m not sure. That’s a question for the future. For now I think I’d just like to watch, but I think we’d both appreciate some company.”

She isn’t sure that she really cares whether she has company or not, but she’s curious to get to know this Millennial Tree, and even more curious to know whether there are more people like them out there.

For a while it’s just the two of them, watching. Millennial Tree has no temple as of yet, nowhere to hold a pantheon, just a rough shelter grown from trees beside a massive lake in the middle of the forest.

“I don’t see how you’re watching anything from here,” She says disdainfully. “Humans don’t enter this forest. It frightens them.”

“I’ll show you. I figured this out recently.” 

There’s a large stone that juts into the lake, flat on top and glittering with mica in the sunlight that filters through the canopy, and he leads her there and sits down on the warm rock. 

“What is this supposed to do?” She asks him, but he doesn’t respond. 

He presses his palms flat to the stone, face turned up to the sunlight, and as she watches, what she’d taken to be hair begins to grow, twisting and creeping its way down to the rock and then beyond it, dipping into the clear, smooth surface of the water. As he takes root it seems to her that he becomes more alive, more solid, and it looks as if he’s taken on a glow of his own in the sunlight. 

The lake had been undisturbed by wind, had not seemed to ripple at all even when touched by falling leaves or by Millennial Tree’s hair, but there are waves now, and it reaches an almost violent tumult before settling again, and when she looks down into the water she sees the little settlement he had found her at, recreated in perfect detail. The villagers are moving as they had when she’d been there, talking and trading and strikingly  _ real _ , but when she reaches down to dip a hand into the water to touch one, the vision goes blurry and indistinct until the water calms again.

“You see, now,” Millennial Tree says slowly, and she looks over at him to see him watching her with a serene smile on his face. “Once I’ve seen a place myself, I can do this.”

“Can I?”

His thoughts seem to move more sluggishly when he’s in this state- he doesn’t reply for a long minute. “Perhaps,” He says finally. “I suppose you’d have to try.”

He releases whatever hold he has on the lake, and the image fades back into clear greenish water as he sits back, breathing slowly.

“It would look different for you, I think.” His hair, though it was in the lake just a moment ago, seems perfectly dry and straight. “You’ll have to try things out until something feels right.”

“How did you know what to do?”

He shrugs. “I was sitting here enjoying the sunlight and thinking about a place I had seen. It just... happened.”

It’s a perfectly useless answer, and she sits down beside him, trying not to let her frustration show. 

“I don’t think I can do what you did,” She agrees, after what might be hours of sitting silently, waiting for… something. “I’m not getting anything. Not here.”

He lays a hand on her shoulder reassuringly- it’s cool and rough, like tree bark. 

“I’m certain you’ll have abilities outside of mine,” He says. “It wouldn’t make much sense for there to be overlap.”

“I suppose not,” She agrees. That does, of course, make sense, but it makes it all the more frustrating, because she won’t have any guide. She’ll have to figure things out for herself.

Looking back on it, Dark Enchantress thinks that maybe this is the root of their schism. Millennial Tree sits back and watches, always watches, visiting the humans at various milestones in their development but seldom interfering. She’s different: she walks among the humans more frequently than not, leaving the cozy, quiet little clearing for the activity of the human settlements. 

It’s she who introduces magic to them, and Millennial Tree isn’t very happy about it, but once the cat’s out of the bag there’s no getting it back.

He wants to let them develop the affinity naturally- or not at all- but they’re such a curious people, and she’s sure that they could achieve quite a lot in short order if only someone gave them the push they needed. 

And they do: within a handful of generations, their most adept casters have established a strong foundation for the practice and are advancing entirely without her help, and oftentimes she finds herself learning when she decides to observe their research.

By then, Millennial Tree has found the peers he had been speculating about, and she finds that she no longer holds his attention the way she did before. When she thinks about it more she decides that it’s not his attention she wants, however; she prefers to be let alone for what she affectionately calls her ‘experiments,’ and what he reproachfully calls her ‘meddling.’ What she wants is his admiration, his respect, and that’s in short supply for her as he brings their fellow deities into the fold.

The first of them is a younger-looking man who stumbles upon their glade, apparently by accident. The lake is always calm, and the trees block the wind, but a breeze stirs the branches as the man steps forward, lowering his bow to regard them suspiciously. He’s like them- he has to be, or he wouldn’t have been able to find the clearing- and Millennial Tree welcomes him warmly, offering guidance and company and a home, and the man accepts graciously. They call him Wind Archer, and he never does come to trust her.

The second is a woman whom they find asleep, and it’s obvious by the silver halo that always seems to frame her head that she’s like them, too. It’s a long time before she wakes to speak to them, weeks of waiting, but when she comes to she’s friendly and pleasant and eager to help, in much the same way that the moon is on a dark night. The dress and veil she wears seem cut from the night sky itself, and appropriately, she calls herself Moonlight. They find her sitting outside often, looking puzzled, but when asked she can say only that something is missing that she can’t quite remember, and she sleeps for long stretches of time after these incidents, insisting that if she can only find the right dream then she’ll know what it is she lost.

One night she calls them all urgently, and this is how they find the third. She has a fragment of a memory, hazey and fading quickly, and if they’ll only trust her, she can reclaim what was taken. She works with Millennial Tree, describing in as much detail as she can give what she saw, and between the two of them they make out a blurry scene. They find the tower after much searching, and normally none of them would feel the weather, but the water and the air are bitterly cold surrounding it, and Millennial Tree stays back for fear of injury. Moonlight doesn’t seem to notice, and she climbs the tower urgently, and at the top is the third of them, frozen solid- she hadn’t known such a thing was possible, nor how to fix it, but Moonlight goes to the woman and all she knows is that one minute the new deity is ice and the next she’s alive, clutching a sword to her chest and weeping into Moonlight’s shoulder. She introduces herself as Sea Fairy, and she won’t say why they found her the way they did, but from then on she and Moonlight are inseparable.

The last two they find together, in the wake of a catastrophic volcano eruption. One takes the same shape that they do, a (mostly) human man wielding a staff that he seems unusually protective of, and his hair is on fire, but it seems rude to point that out. He’s perpetually pleased with himself in a way that Millennial Tree apparently finds endearing, and he agrees to join them in what’s rapidly becoming more of a temple than a shelter. His companion is not so agreeable: they take the form of a massive dragon and refuse to be anything else, though Fire Spirit informs them that they could do so if they wanted to. The dragon sits sternly atop a roost of scalding rock and will neither come down nor talk, and Fire Spirit tells them that their name is Pitaya, and that they probably aren’t going to want to trade their valley for a forest.

The pantheon comes together in less than a century, and in that time Dark Enchantress finds herself being pushed further from the center of things, even though she has more experience than any of the rest of them. 

They’re content to watch like Millennial Tree is, each in their own way, and she’s isolated in her desire to  _ change _ things. For all their  _ watching _ , she’s surprised that no one approaches her sooner.

She notices earlier than any of them the subtle differences that begin to arise among the humans as their civilizations become more complex and their populations begin to interact more. They might have stayed subtle differences, or they might even have been corrected if she’d mentioned them to her fellow deities, but she decides to keep it to herself, to finally give in to that urge to experiment on the humans directly, not just interfering in their affairs.

It’s easy to influence someone’s actions, she finds. She has the ability to drastically alter someone’s decisions, their disposition, their opinions, but after only a few tries at this she decides that it lacks style. There are much more nuanced ways of finding out what will happen  _ if _ , and she capitalizes on this: all it takes is a nudge in one direction for the entirety of that individual’s path to change, which by nature influences others’.

She plays with this and she causes quite a lot of domino effects, sometimes mere reshufflings of local hierarchies and sometimes full-scale warfare between nations, and she knows that Millennial Tree is watching, always, yet he doesn’t confront her, not until far too late.

Simply put, he’s scared, not necessarily of her but of her approach to things. All of them have interfered with the humans at some point, to offer insight or advice, or blessings to humans they’ve taken a particular liking to, but the more Dark Enchantress meddles, the more Millennial Tree backs off, and the rest of them follow his lead.

Finally he seems to gather his wits, decades after the linchpin has already been pulled, and he asks her to come outside with him one night while the rest of the pantheon is busy or resting.

They sit on the stone on the lake, and Millennial Tree falls into his familiar position, conjuring an image of a burning village on the lake, and she looks at it with interest but without sympathy. He studies her face- even without looking at him, she knows he’s looking- and after a moment he lets the vision fade, staring hard at her.

“You did this,” He says gently. It isn’t an accusation, and it isn’t a question: he knows it, and she knows it, and that’s that.

“I caused it, but I didn’t  _ do _ it,” She corrects him, as if the distinction really matters. “They did that themselves.”

“They did it because of you. Because you interfered.” He takes one of her hands, and doesn’t let go even when she tries to pull away. Somehow his grip is more unsettling than the way he’s staring. “Why did you do it?”

“I was curious.” Even now, after knowing him for centuries, after understanding the way he thinks, she sees no reason to be ashamed or apologetic.

“Can you fix it?”

“Why should I?” 

“This is not the path they were meant to walk.”

“You don’t know that,” She tells him. “You don’t get to decide for them just because you came around first.”

“And you don’t get to decide what happens to them just because you’re curious.” His grip is almost crushing, now. “You are going to fix this, and you are going to do so as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.”

“I will do no such thing,” She says, tries to pull her hand away and fails. “I was close behind you, Millennial Tree. I have as much of a right to them as you do.”

“None of us have a right to them.” He scowls. “We’re here to guide them, not to control them.”

“I  _ am _ guiding them.”

“Not in the right direction.”

“And why should  _ you _ decide what’s right for them?” She finally manages to pull her hand away, and he’s all but glaring now as she stands. “You don’t have to like what I’m doing, you old tree, but you had better stay out of my way.”

“You don’t have the authority to order me,” He says, tense as he stands eye-to-eye with her. “I am telling you to correct the damage you’ve done.”

“And I am telling you no.”

She meets his eyes, cool and unflinching even in the face of his anger. He’s seldom anything other than collected and calmly authoritative, but now his fury is warping his features: his hair, normally perfectly straight and unmoving, has twisted itself into complicated and somehow angry shapes, and his antlers are gnarled, thorny branches.

“You do not,” He says slowly, and there’s an irrefutable power in his voice, “Have the right to refuse me this.”

“I have the right to refuse you anything I like.”

“I have never denied you anything. I have never restricted your freedom nor put limits on your strength. The others defer to me, but never have I insisted that you bow to me.” He seems to be carefully keeping himself in check, but the state of his form betrays him and he knows it. “I am telling you now, for the love that I have for you, to stop your meddling. If you continue your insolence we will both regret what happens.”

“I will regret nothing.” She regards him with distaste. “You could never hope to understand, you old tree. You’ve done nothing  _ to  _ regret. You sit back and  _ watch _ . You’re scared of action and you’re scared of change and you’re scared of  _ me _ .”

“I would never fear the likes of you,” He says bitterly- evidently this strikes a 

nerve, because he steps towards her, intending to menace her into acquiescence. “There is no power you hold that I could not rival.”

“How could you possibly know that?” She’s standing at the edge of the rock, back to the lake, her heels nearly hanging over the water, but she won’t lose any ground to Millennial Tree. “How could you know what I’m capable of, Millennial Tree, if you don’t want me using my power? If you turn a blind eye to it? You said yourself when we first met that our strengths lie in different places.”

“That may be so, but I am certain that I could overtake you. You are acting cruelly and selfishly and without regard for others, and I am not the first to notice this, only the first to approach you.” He says nothing for a long moment- gathering his patience, perhaps. “I want this to be civil. It is perhaps more than you deserve.”

“Why should you decide what I deserve? I could easily have been eldest, Millennial Tree- in fact I might have been, and not known it. It would be easy for you to lie. Certainly you have no witnesses.”

“I have never lied to you. I doubt that you could say the same to me.”

“I am nothing if not honest. Why would I deceive you? Why would you be worth the trouble of that? And really, why should I have to, in a position like mine?”

“That is exactly your problem.” He seems more upset now than he’d been a minute ago, and the ivy on his antlers twists almost violently. “You are looking at your power from entirely the wrong angle. The fact that you are  _ able _ to do something does not mean that you  _ ought _ to.”

“You would say that,” She sneers. “Do you recall the plagues that ravaged the nations? I’m certain you do, and I’m certain you recall the lives lost. You had the  _ power  _ to put an end to them, yet you decided it was best to let it run its course. I wonder where their people might be now if you had deemed them worthy of your help.”

This, finally, seems to abash him: he sighs heavily, wilts a little as he averts his gaze.

“They will not grow to be self-sufficient if we intervene at every sign of trouble.”

“Part of growth is to expand in every direction, isn’t it? You ought to know that. Does a tree only grow its roots in one direction?”

“These things are not comparable.”

“You won’t admit your own blindness. You’re pathetic.” She reaches forward and, before he can stop her, plucks a leaf from the ivy on his antler. She knows that he doesn’t feel it, but he flinches nonetheless, and scowls at her, and she’s certain for a moment that he’s finally going to rise to the bait. “I will not undo what I’ve done and I will not stop doing it. If you’re so confident that you can rival me, go ahead- fix the damage. I won’t stop you: I give you my word on that. I’ll be shocked to see you anywhere that isn’t rooted to the ground.”

She expects that this will be the end of their conversation- it certainly feels final to her- but he doesn’t move out of her way, keeping her stuck with her back to the lake.

“We are no longer negotiating, Dark Enchantress,” He says, his words measured. “And I am not making a request. If you will not cooperate then I am under no obligation to treat you with such courtesy.”

“I gave you full invitation to put a stop to my work yourself,” She scoffs. “If it’s beneath you, that’s through no fault of mine.”

“Clearly you miss the point. There should be no need for me to intervene- there should be no need for this conversation, nor for our distrust of you.”

“So you admit that you’ve been distancing me intentionally. Need I remind you of who helped you gather our merry little band?”

“You distanced yourself by your actions, Enchantress. Can I in good conscience keep you close when everything you do runs counter to our intentions?”

“I wonder if you have a conscience at all, Tree. Obviously there’s nothing that keeps you awake at night.”

He looks at her with the kind of searching look that makes her want to get out of his sight as quickly as possible, and he shakes his head. 

“For all the time we’ve known each other, you misunderstand me,” He says softly, a striking contrast to the sharp tone he’d been speaking in just moments ago. “Perhaps I misunderstand you too.”

Taken aback by his sudden humility, all she says is, “Perhaps you do.”

They stand in silence for a long, tense minute, neither moving, neither breaking eye contact. She’s sure that he’s going to push his demand: he’s sure that she’s readying another biting remark.

Finally he sighs, and his posture loses its stiffness as he steps back and turns away from her. “We won’t see eye-to-eye on this. Not now and maybe not ever. But even if you won’t stop meddling, I expect that you’ll at least stop ruining them deliberately. Even you must see the futility in that.”

She isn’t sure whether any of the other inhabitants of the pantheon witnessed their conversation, but if they were wary of her before, they begin to outright avoid her. Only Wind Archer seems to acknowledge her anymore, and it’s only when she’s around Millennial Tree- clearly he’s afraid that she’ll try to hurt the old tree, but she isn’t stupid enough to try to attack him directly.

At first the thought of trying to take the pantheon for herself seems ridiculous. It would be five against one, and even with her experience and considerable power, she can’t possibly take on five gods at once and expect anything other than to be completely destroyed.

But time goes on, and she resents being ostracized; for two generations of humans she abstains from interfering, and still Millennial Tree won’t so much as look her way, nor will the rest of the pantheon stop giving her sideways looks every time she’s around.

So she starts thinking about taking the pantheon. It poses a challenge to be sure, especially considering that she can’t risk making a move against Millennial Tree openly, not when Wind Archer takes his self-appointed role as guardian so seriously. If she wants to be able to challenge Millennial Tree, her first step is to get Wind Archer out of the way.

Outright trying to kill him isn’t the way to go: that would attract too much attention to her plans, and might incite even Millennial Tree to finally act against her, and she doesn’t necessarily want to hurt him, anyway. She just needs him not to interfere or, better yet, to help her somehow. Undoubtedly he’ll be the most difficult to convince, since he’s become like a son to Millennial Tree and she’s of the opinion that he ought to be deposed as the head of the pantheon, but it occurs to her that maybe he doesn’t have to be  _ convinced _ . She’s Millennial Tree’s equal in all but title, and her set of powers makes her uniquely capable of getting people to obey her regardless of whether they really agree with her; all she has to do is figure out how to make it work on her fellow deities.

It turns out to be almost easier than manipulating the humans, but maybe that’s only because she’s had the opportunity to observe Wind Archer for hundreds of years, and she understands him more deeply than any of the humans she’s toyed with in the past. She has to work subtly- anything too overt will make him suspicious, conscious that he’s being  _ adjusted _ \- but even so it isn’t long before he seems more bitter, more resentful of the rest of the pantheon. She’s careful not to take it too far, though: if the others notice too drastic a change in him, they might question it, and their poking around might reveal her as the culprit. All she wants is for Wind Archer to doubt, and the rest will follow, and when she’s ready to use him, all she’ll have to do is reap what she’s now sowing.

Wind Archer was the obvious first target, but she has difficulty deciding who else she might be able to take for herself, and there’s no easy way to figure that out. The task is too delicate for her to be able to split her attention: she has to choose carefully and act deliberately, because the second Millennial Tree finds out, she must either make her move or give up her ambitions entirely.

She considers Fire Spirit only briefly. She needs someone with real influence with Millennial Tree, and Millennial Tree seems to regard Fire Spirit with an affectionate, if oftentimes bemused, tolerance (like a parent towards a troublesome child, she thinks), not with the genuine respect he shows to Moonlight and Sea Fairy. Still, Fire Spirit is a force to be reckoned with when he puts his mind to something, and she’d rather not have to worry about dealing with him. Even superficially searching she can find several points of weakness, though, and she pushes the thought of him aside, confident that she can easily get him out of her way when the time comes.

Between Sea Fairy and Moonlight, she’s far more concerned about having to oppose Moonlight, not because of any great difference in power between the two of them but because she already knows one concrete way to take Sea Fairy out of the picture. She knows no such weakness of Moonlight’s, but she does know that if she were able to get Moonlight on her side, she would be nearly impossible to stop.

Moonlight is more of an enigma to her than Wind Archer had been, and it takes her a while to find a way to her heart that doesn’t involve going through the other members of the pantheon. She knows that Moonlight takes her strength from dreams, so it follows that if she can somehow manipulate the dreams that Moonlight draws from, then she can manipulate her power and, hopefully, her behavior.

It’s largely guesswork at first, since Moonlight’s power is almost mirror of hers- she uses her strength to influence people’s minds to manipulate their lives, whereas Moonlight draws strength off of something that comes as a result of people’s lives manipulating their own minds- and it’s a task of great scale, considering that she has to alter a great portion of people in order to ensure that Moonlight encounters what she needs her to.

It takes far longer than she’d expected it to, especially when it requires constant maintenance on her end, and she’s beginning to get impatient when, finally, she begins to observe the subtle changes she needs. Moonlight begins to withdraw from Millennial Tree and even a little from Sea Fairy, becomes more cynical and less agreeable, and where she’d fretted over the abundance of nightmares before she now seems to enjoy it, preferring to lead the victims further into unpleasant dreams rather than gently guiding them out as she used to.

She witnesses a brief dispute between Moonlight and Millennial Tree, even, which ends with an indignant Moonlight and a baffled Millennial Tree, and the following day she can hardly contain her delight. Everything is going so well, more smoothly than she had ever dared hope, and now all that remains is to advance her hold on Moonlight and Wind Archer and to incapacitate Fire Spirit, which will be a simple task with the powers soon to be at her disposal.

She speaks to them aside when she’s sure no one else is paying attention, and finds that they treat her with the same deference they had treated Millennial Tree with- not exactly the undying, unquestioning loyalty she had initially aimed for, but rather with calculated respect for her and her position, as well as a certain willingness to follow instructions she gives them, if they believe them to be reasonable. It puts limits on her actions, but it also means that her methods have been more thorough than she’d initially planned for them to be: they aren’t just blindly obeying, they  _ agree,  _ and that may prove invaluable when she finally decides to challenge the old tree himself.

All of a sudden he seems to be paying attention to her again, and she’s not ashamed to admit that she acts even more spitefully towards him, haughtily ignoring him on the occasions he tries to approach her. She’s so caught up in the euphoria of this sudden role reversal that somehow the thought escapes her that he’s observing her for treachery just as she’s observed him for weakness all these decades past.

Gradually, the change in demeanor begins to affect even their appearances, and she realizes that she’s going have to move things along before Millennial Tree picks up on it. It’s subtle now- Wind Archer looks more muted somehow, his greens beginning to gray, and Moonlight’s hair has gone from a deep starry blue to a flat, fathomless black- but she’s sure that will change, and she needs to be ready when that happens.

Getting together with Wind Archer and Moonlight is going to pose a problem when Millennial Tree is watching, but it proves not to be an issue after all when he disappears, suddenly and with no word as to where he’s going.

“Has he finally violated his noninterference policy?” She asks offhandedly, to no one in particular, pretending to be busy with some human runes she had learned a few decades ago. “I wonder what was so important that he deemed it worth his attention.”

Sea Fairy regards her coldly from where she’s sitting at the side of the lake. She glances at Moonlight as if expecting her to protest in Millennial Tree’s defense, but Moonlight stares coolly back, and Sea Fairy sighs.

“He’s visiting someone,” Sea Fairy says, and the water of the lake whips into an angry froth at her feet.

“Did he say who?”

“I don’t see why it matters, but no, he didn’t.”

She’s tempted to try to press for more information, but Moonlight lays a hand on Sea Fairy’s arm and says something, and both of them turn away before she can say anything.

She hadn’t counted on Moonlight’s continuing love for Sea Fairy, and it’s an unnecessary complication in her plans: Sea Fairy should have been easy to overcome, given the fact that confiscating that sword would be enough to incapacitate her, but Moonlight has made it abundantly clear that she will tolerate no such treatment of her. It will have to be enough to trust that Moonlight will subdue her when the time comes, otherwise she’ll have no choice but to turn on Moonlight as well, and that’s an outcome she’d much rather avoid.

When she speaks to them privately, away from Sea Fairy and Fire Spirit, she finds an interesting difference between the two of them, something she hadn’t really expected.

“Before I tell you what our next step necessitates,” She says, cautiously, “I’m curious to know why the two of you have chosen to assist me.” She does not, of course, mention that she’d taken the liberty of influencing them herself, nor does she suggest any answers. She knows that they’ll do what she wants them to, if she’s careful with her requests; she asks so that she can understand them better, and in doing so tighten her hold on them.

“Do you not trust us?” Wind Archer asks, a little sourly.

“I trust you, Wind Archer, or rather I’d like to, but you must understand that you really have not proven anything to me. We’ve taken no true action as of yet- that’s what I will ask of you tonight, and I must be sure that you’re committed.”

“And if we aren’t?”

“Then I will continue without you.”

Wind Archer is quiet for a long moment, staring at her with hard eyes. “I choose to work with you because I believe you will prevail. That’s all.”

She knows that it runs a little deeper than that- he resents being unable to go forth into the world and  _ act _ , even if it isn’t outright forbidden to him- but she only nods. 

“I understand wanting to be with the winning team,” She says, and his face softens just a little. “Regardless of your motivations, I will not forget your help when this is over.”

Moonlight looks thoughtful. “I’m enjoying myself,” She admits after several minutes of quiet. “I know that I could never do what I’m doing now if Millennial Tree knew about it. If it’s my domain, I feel that I should be able to act freely within it. It’s interesting to see exactly what I can do.”

It catches her off-guard, how closely Moonlight’s reasoning resembles her own, even if she did have a part in fostering it. She’s certain that Fire Spirit and Sea Fairy must feel the same way, limited by Millennial Tree’s cowardice, but it doesn’t seem to affect them nearly as much, and she’s unable to use it against them. 

“What do we need to do next?” Wind Archer asks, looking impatient with the whole conversation.

“Fire Spirit,” She replies, and Wind Archer makes a face. “I have no interest in recruiting him, but I must acknowledge the threat he poses to me- to  _ us _ . I believe I know a way to keep him under control without confronting him or arousing suspicion in anyone else, but I require help from both of you.”

And she lays it out for them, quietly. Wind Archer has never been especially patient with Fire Spirit, but he must ignore him completely now, and use his power to deny Fire Spirit as much strength as possible. On top of starving him out, Moonlight must try to manipulate his dreams into nightmares capable of dampening his mood, and with luck they can reduce him to a shadow of his former self, and then they’ll be able to go to Millennial Tree directly.

It doesn’t take as long as she’d expected it to for Fire Spirit to begin to deteriorate, and his flames are already noticeably dulled when Millennial Tree returns, looking downtrodden. She’s curious to know what’s got him so upset, but she doesn’t dare ask and admit that she’s paying attention to him for fear that that in and of itself will seem suspicious.

He pulls Sea Fairy aside, and they have a long conversation, and several times she catches one of them glancing her way as they talk, and she feigns ignorance as she pretends not to be watching them. They seem to be disagreeing on something, but it seems like Sea Fairy gets her way in the end, and they disappear into the temple together for a long while, and when they come back out he looks deeply troubled.

She catches a little piece of their conversation, then, as he prepares to leave once more.

“I have to try again,” He says, though he looks defeated.

“You know how they are,” Sea Fairy says softly, her grip tight on the hilt of her sword. “If they refused you once, they’ll refuse you again, and not so politely this time.”

“They must listen now.” He sounds desperate, and she knows then that everything is going her way- soon everything will be in place, and even he senses it, even if he doesn’t know what  _ everything _ entails. “Especially after this, when…” He gestures towards the temple. 

“Will that be enough to sway them?”

“If it isn’t, nothing will be enough, and then we may as well… I won’t say it, but you understand the sentiment.”  
“Will you let me accompany you, at least?”

“They may not take kindly to my bringing a guest,” He tells her gently. “Regardless, I need you here. As much as it pains me to say, I can trust no one else to keep an eye on things in my absence.”

She frowns and looks down at her feet, fidgeting with her sword. “If they don’t agree…”

He takes her free hand and presses it between both of his. “We will find a way,” He tells her, and Sea Fairy may be fooled, but Dark Enchantress certainly is not. She knows what he looks like when he’s afraid, and he’s afraid now. “Stay here and watch. Don’t put yourself at risk.”

“I should say the same to you.”

He leaves shortly thereafter, despite Sea Fairy’s protests, and she seems preoccupied as she goes back to sit by the lake, not far from where Dark Enchantress herself is.

“Where is he running off to this time?”

Sea Fairy, startled, turns a sharp look on her. “If he wanted you to know, he would have told you.”

She presses a hand to her chest in mock offense. “There’s no need to be rude. You act as though you have something to hide.”

“And you don’t?” The currents of Sea Fairy’s hair twist angrily. “Leave off whatever it is you’re trying to do, Dark Enchantress, and stop toying with Moonlight and Wind Archer. You’ve twisted them both, and Fire Spirit is nearly extinguished. Millennial Tree has forgiven you many things, but he will not forgive you this, nor will I.”

“Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dark Enchantress says, fighting to keep a smile off her face. “I have noticed some changes in their behavior, but I’ve been concerning myself with the humans, if you weren’t aware.”

“Do me a favor,” Sea Fairy says sourly, “And don’t insult my intelligence by trying to lie to me. Maybe I wouldn’t have been certain of Wind Archer or of Fire Spirit, but I  _ know _ Moonlight, and I see your influence all over her.”

“If she decided that she agreed with me, well, that’s hardly my fault, is it? Each of us is entitled to our own beliefs, something you might do well to remember before you follow obediently at Millennial Tree’s heels.”

“I make my own decisions independently of him, Dark Enchantress, but in certain things we agree: for example, we agree that what you do is cruel and unnecessary. But we have our differences as well, particularly in our opinions of your character. He still believes that you can be put back on the correct path, but I say that his sentimental nature is clouding his judgement. You’ve made it clear that you’re unwilling to change, and now you act against _us_ - I say to the abyss with you, and let time forget that we ever crossed paths.”

“Well,” Dark Enchantress says, and stands and smooths down her dress. “I appreciate your frankness, even if we don’t see eye-to-eye. All I really have to say to that is that I hope you come around soon, for your sake and mine.”

Her plan, which she shares with Moonlight and Wind Archer, is to confront Millennial Tree as soon as he returns from wherever he went. Despite their little conversation, Sea Fairy can’t possibly anticipate anything, so it’s unlikely that she’ll warn him of anything beforehand, and with luck they can catch him off-guard and avoid too much unnecessary conflict. Even if she’s confident in her ability to succeed, a physical fight between them is sure to be messy, and she’d rather avoid wasting that kind of time and energy if she can.

Sea Fairy won’t let her or Wind Archer within a hundred feet of Fire Spirit, but curiously enough she allows Moonlight every freedom, so it’s through Moonlight that she learns how Fire Spirit is faring. The answer to that is, without exception, that he’s faring poorly, and only getting worse, even though she’s stopped interacting with him completely. She hadn’t expected his condition to snowball the way it is, and she’s not sure that she likes it, but it’s interesting to hear about nonetheless, and she asks Moonlight to keep a careful eye on him: it wouldn’t do for him to go and die right before her efforts finally come to fruition.

Millennial Tree returns looking slightly more hopeful than he had last time, but still he seems concerned, especially after talking to Sea Fairy. She leads him into the temple- Dark Enchantress doesn’t need to be able to scry to know that she’s taking him to see Fire Spirit- and when he finally comes back outside, his expression is guarded.

Once again his form betrays him, though, as he approaches her for what must be the first time in years if not in decades. Time is a trivial concept to them, measured more so by the generations of humans than by anything else, but they haven’t spoken in quite a while, and it shows in the way that he speaks to her.

He stops a few yards away from her, not at the distance of companions but at the distance of an opponent taking stock of their foe. “Dark Enchantress,” He says, coldly.

She smiles pleasantly at him. “Millennial Tree,” She replies. “So kind of you to come say hello.”

“I am not going to play your games,” He says, ignoring her. “I have given you ample opportunity to correct your behavior and you have disregarded everything I have told you.”

“That isn’t quite true,” She points out, still smiling. “You told me that I ought to leave the humans alone, so I have.”

“Do not think you can escape responsibility through semantics. You understood my meaning perfectly. What have you done to Fire Spirit?”

“ _ I _ haven’t done anything to the poor boy,” She says. “You might want to ask Moonlight, or perhaps your faithful guardian.”

Something derisive creeps into her voice as she says that, and he frowns. “What did you do to them?”

“Don’t act so dense, Millennial Tree. I know that you’ve been keeping an eye on them- surely you, in your infinite wisdom, understand by now.”

“What,” He says sharply, taking a step forward, “Did you  _ do _ to them?”

“Let’s be civil, now,” She chides, all but beaming now that he’s finally rising to the bait.

“The time for civility is long past,” He snaps, taking another step towards her, hands clenched into fists at his sides. Roots creep up from the ground, growing towards her feet, intending to snare her, as one especially large one reaches up to bind her arms- and a dark arrow pierces it, and it shrivels and blackens where the arrow touches, and Millennial Tree flinches.

Wind Archer is perched in one of the trees that rings the clearing, bow drawn and a new arrow nocked and aimed directly at Millennial Tree’s head. Even she’s a little surprised at seeing him; she knew he’d support her, but she hadn’t expected him to immediately take such drastic action against the person he’s been the staunch guardian of for so long.

“Step away from her.”

Millennial Tree looks baffled, and beyond that he looks hurt beyond words. “Wind Archer…”

“Away,” Wind Archer repeats, and begins to draw the string back a little further.

The roots settle back into the ground as Millennial Tree takes a few steps back, never looking away from Wind Archer. “What has she done to you?” He asks, voice weak, and she could interrupt, but she wants to relish every second of this. 

“She has done nothing to me, only helped me see what I should have known long ago.”

“Wind Archer,” Millennial Tree says gently. “How could you believe her, after everything?”

He ignores that, gliding gently down to the ground but staying within the shade of the trees. “Understand that this is nothing personal- I wish you no harm, but I will do what must be done.”

“And who decides that, Wind Archer? Who decides what must be done? Maybe you believe her when she says that I am not meant to lead, but why should she take my place?”

That seems to throw him- he’s quiet for a long moment, and he lowers his bow slightly, though he doesn’t take his aim off Millennial Tree. “We may discuss succession when we finish this,” He says. “But this comes first.”

“Do you intend to kill me?” The ground writhes at his feet as he turns his attention back to her. “Or rather, do you intend to try?”

“I haven’t quite decided,” She says sweetly. “Do you intend to make this difficult?”

“I intend to do whatever is necessary to bring Wind Archer to his senses, and whatever is necessary to bring you to heel.”

She smiles. “But you won’t kill me.” 

“I will not stoop to that level unless I must, but I will not be forced to resort to that. Even with Fire Spirit incapacitated, we outnumber you, and I know that you have forced Wind Archer’s perspective onto him- it will not be difficult to get him back.”

“Outnumber? Perhaps I’m rusty on my math, Tree, but three was greater than two the last time I checked, and at present it’s only two against one, and you’re at the disadvantage.”

“Moonlight is-”

“Of the same opinion as Wind Archer,” She tells him, and his scowl deepens. “Oh, don’t act like this is news- you’ve been suspecting it, but you’ve been in denial, haven’t you? Turning a blind eye to the things you don’t like, same as ever.”

“...And Sea Fairy?”

“I didn’t make the effort, to be perfectly honest with you,” She says dismissively. “She’s yours, but not for much longer, I’m afraid. Even now Moonlight may have her.”

As if on cue, Sea Fairy exits the temple and spots them and freezes in her tracks, but something is wrong. Moonlight should be with her, keeping her carefully in control (since she refused to just take that damned sword from her), but Moonlight is nowhere to be found, and Sea Fairy looks completely normal save for the tears streaking her face.

Millennial Tree turns to look at Sea Fairy. “Is she...?”

“She’s asleep,” Sea Fairy says, pain in her voice. “For how long I don’t know. Whatever we’re doing, we must work quickly.”

It’s an unfortunate hiccup in what was supposed to be a flawless plan, but she’s certain that she can overcome it. Sea Fairy is powerful beyond measure, but only when she’s backed by the strength of the water she controls: with only the lake of the clearing to rely on, it will be easy to pry the sword from her, and then she’ll no longer be an issue- Moonlight can handle the problem of thawing her when she wakes, if she so chooses, but that will be of no concern to Dark Enchantress. And Millennial Tree won’t be difficult to subdue, either, not when Wind Archer can starve out anything he summons with a single arrow and she herself can create nearly anything to use against him. The humans may not have been especially strong, but they lent much to her imagination, something that his magic is limited in.

“Are you sure you will not reconsider?” Asks Millennial Tree, more to Wind Archer than to her.

“She has been given too many chances already,” Sea Fairy says, glaring at her, sword held ready, the waters of the lake swirling behind her, gathering height. “Taking her will release Wind Archer and Moonlight both. We will be safer when we are rid of her.”

“Be careful with him,” Millennial Tree tells Sea Fairy, gently, and it’s the last thing she hears him say before the fight begins.

Wind Archer seems to understand what the dynamic is; he steps out from under the shade of the trees to get between her and Sea Fairy, his bow trained on her chest.

“Don’t kill,” She tells Wind Archer in a low voice, and he nods. “Let her think that you will, but I want them both alive.”

“I wouldn’t have killed her anyway.”

In the light, Wind Archer’s change is even more apparent: he’s lost his color entirely, the bright greens of his hair and skin faded to dull grays, and overall he just looks withered and unwell, and she revels in the effect this revelation has on Millennial Tree and Sea Fairy both.

Sea Fairy seems to steel herself more quickly than Millennial Tree, though, and she closes her eyes and holds her sword to her chest as the wall of water behind her surges forward to engulf Wind Archer. Wind Archer evades it easily, though, gifted with the swiftness and agility of the wind, and fires an arrow at her- the water at her feet rises and flash-freezes into a wall, and the arrow shatters on impact, splintering into harmless black flakes.

Satisfied that Wind Archer will be able to hold his own, she turns to Millennial Tree, who has gathered a tangle of roots at his feet but has yet to make a move. 

“It isn’t too late to step down,” She tells him, mock concern in her voice. “I can’t make any promises, but it will be safer for you and her.”

“I will sooner die here than let you have your way.”

“So be it.” She neglects to mention that that had been the answer she had been hoping for.

She has a broader range of powers than he does, and she’s confident that she can overpower him because of this, but she still has to watch her step: he’s in his element here, and he can attack from any direction with any amount of strength.

One of the roots at his feet leaps forward at her, suddenly, a massive, gnarled thing that must certainly belong to one of the ancient trees ringing the clearing. After a moment’s concentration, she summons a massive clawed hand twice as large as she is, and it shreds the root as easily as a knife through butter. She can’t take credit for the original idea- the humans invented the spell, albeit on a much smaller scale, and often used it for menial tasks- but she discovered it and evolved it into something of power, and she’s realizing now just how well-suited it is to fighting him.

He frowns, but he doesn’t seem particularly bothered, just seems to reassess his strategy: he relinquishes his hold on the plants near him, and they shrink back into the ground.

“I don’t want to do this,” He tells her. “Don’t make me.”

“You said it yourself,” She replies, and tries to push him to the ground with the hand, but the roots shoot up from the ground and wind around the hand, holding it in place as they constrict, slowly crushing it. “The time for civility is past.”

“All you have to do is stop this, Dark Enchantress. I ask for nothing more.”

“You are in no position to ask anything of me,” She tells him coolly, gathering her concentration to summon another hand, which she uses to rip away the vines encumbering the first. 

He takes a step back- her first victory, however small- and the roots weave themselves into a spiked wall preventing her from approaching him directly.

“I ask you as an equal, not as an authority.” The hands tear at the wall, but it regrows as quickly as they break it, and she redoubles her efforts and summons a third hand, and slowly they begin to make progress.

“You presume to consider yourself my equal?” In her sudden surge of anger, one of the hands slams through the wall, ruining itself in the process but making an opening for the second hand to enter. The claws stop inches from Millennial Tree’s face- the bramble manages to restrain the hand at the last second, and with a frustrated noise, she allows them to destroy the second hand as well. “That is a grave insult, Millennial Tree. In all aspects I am above you.”

“You are not my superior,” He says, stepping out from behind his wall, appearing shaken by his close call. “Nor am I yours.”

“That will change soon,” She growls, and behind her a circle opens, and a little shard of darkness darts towards him. 

A thick flowering vine shoots upwards and takes the blow for him; the second it collides, the vine shrivels and falls to the ground, brown and brittle and lifeless, and he looks down at it with an unfathomably sad expression.

“Is that what you want for me?” He asks, in such a gentle, mournful tone that it gives her pause. She allows him to bend to pick up the vine, and in his hands it begins to recover, slowly regaining its color and fullness as it slinks back into the ground. “For all the time we spent together, for all that we witnessed, this is how you want it to end?”

“This is how it  _ must  _ end,” She hisses, her second of hesitation unsettling her. She can’t be this easily influenced by him- for all her mastery of manipulation, she’s still caught off-guard at his sudden sincerity, even if she’s convinced that it’s an act. “You did this.  _ You _ are the reason I must take such drastic measures- if I had had it my way from the beginning we would never have grown apart.”

His lips press into a thin line. “That’s the lesson you failed to learn through all these years,” He says, a touch scornfully. “You cannot always have everything your way.”

“I can and I will,” She snaps, and another dart stabs into the vine coiled at his feet, and it blackens and crumbles. “Resist as long as you like, but the effort is futile. I will reduce this forest to dust before I give in to you.”

“And you’ll kill me?” He asks, and steps aside to avoid another dart. “You know in your heart that I never pushed you away. You allowed your jealousy to ruin you. You could have been family, Enchantress.”

“Could have, once upon a time,” She agrees bitterly, the last surviving hand taking hold of the roots poking out of the ground and ripping them bodily from the earth, severing them from their parent plants. “Not once you gathered  _ them _ . They would not have me.”

“They wouldn’t have you because of what you became. You could have reached out, but you let yourself languish in your own resentment until you convinced yourself that we were irreconcilable. I would have been there, Enchantress.”

“I find that hard to believe,” She says, breathing heavily from the exertion and from the flood of emotions that threatens to unbalance her. “You speak as though you were completely aware of what was happening every step of the way, yet you approached me only once, and that to scold me. Was that being  _ there _ , Tree? Am I worth so little to you?”

He sighs, and for a moment his control seems to slip- the roots go limp for just a second before he seems to gather his wits again. “That was my mistake,” He admits, slowly. “I didn’t know how to approach you, and instead of making an effort, I let it go and hoped the situation would correct itself. I wronged you in doing so, Enchantress, and for that I will forever be sorry.”

She had been preparing to send the last of the hands after him, a last effort at tearing down his defenses, but in a moment of weakness she allows it to fall to the ground, inert. Unsure how to respond and needing to recollect herself, she makes the mistake of turning her attention to Wind Archer. He’s moving slower now, tired from having to dodge Sea Fairy’s attacks, but Sea Fairy looks even worse: she’s nearly out of water, having to rely almost entirely on her sword now to deflect his arrows, and though she still strikes with all the power of a tsunami, she’s too sluggish to land any hits on him.

“I truly am sorry,” Millennial Tree repeats, and she turns back to him just in time for the air to be forced out of her lungs as a massive root slams her back into one of the trees at the edge of the clearing. She doesn’t have to breathe, strictly speaking, but the impact is still jarring, and she’s blinking to clear her vision as he walks up to where she’s restrained.

The roots of the tree grow up to snare her legs, and the branches dip to hold her arms against the rough bark, and one curls around her neck, not tight enough to choke her but firm enough to keep her from turning her head.

“You,” She snarls, a film of tears blurring her eyes.

“Tell Wind Archer to lay his bow down.”

“You-”

“Tell him,” He repeats, his voice sharp as the branches dig into her stomach.

Swallowing her pride, she lifts her chin and takes a deep breath. “Wind Archer,” She calls. “Stop attacking and put the bow down.”

He turns to scowl at her, looking between her and Millennial Tree, but he obeys, laying his weapon in the grass and stepping away from Sea Fairy, though he offers no other gesture of surrender. Sea Fairy slumps in relief, sitting back in what little of the lake is left to her.

She notices Dark Enchantress still alive, though, and frowns, twisting the sword in her grip. “Surely you aren’t going to spare her.”

“I will do as I see fit,” He says to her, not unkindly. “Keep your eye on Wind Archer. I will handle her.”

“This is not wise.”

“I have all the respect in the world for you, Sea Fairy, but please allow me my judgement. I would not spare her if I thought it meant further endangering any of you.” 

Sea Fairy looks like she wants to argue, but she says nothing more, just returns her attention to Wind Archer.

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” He says. “You must understand that by now. This could end right here, Enchantress, but I don’t want to make this kind of decision, no matter how much you may want to hurt me.”

Maybe, a moment ago, he might have fooled her with his sentimental nonsense, and maybe a moment ago she would have agreed and allowed her control over Wind Archer to slip away. For a second she had been remorseful, had felt bad for doing this to him, to all of them- but then he had attacked her again and reminded her why she had set out to do this in the first place, and now she’s angry again, in her quiet insidious way that had allowed her to set this entire scheme up.

“I… didn’t want to hurt you,” She says so that only he can hear, a lie so boldfaced that she’s sure he’ll see right through it. “Not physically. Not really. I just needed you to understand, Tree, and it seemed to me like this was the only way to make you. Nothing less seemed adequate to get your attention.”

She can feel the branch around her neck loosen the slightest bit as his expression softens.

“We both made mistakes,” He says, taking a step closer, and the branches around her arms relax a little bit more.

“Millennial Tree,” Sea Fairy calls, her tone a warning, but he shakes his head at her.

“I am sorry we had to go through this to reach an understanding.” A particularly thick root grows and bends to resemble a chair, and he sits on it mere feet from her, folding his robe across his lap. “Or rather that you felt that we had to go through this. If I had spoken to you sooner, perhaps all this could have been avoided.”

Still he hasn’t released her, and while she doesn’t need to be freed to cast spells, she certainly doesn’t want to be under his thumb while she does- if she miscalculates or is unable to free herself quickly enough, he may be able to force her to stop, and she’ll get no third chance if that happens.

Frustrated and impatient though she is, she speaks sweetly, apologetically, and it works like a charm. “You shouldn’t blame yourself,” She tells him, pretending to be unable to meet his eyes, while in reality she’s looking over to see where Wind Archer is. “I didn’t have to go this far. I was upset and thinking irrationally… The fault is all mine, Tree, though it pains me to admit it.”

“I want to prevent this happening in the future, and I hope you do regret it for that reason, but I don’t want you to shoulder that burden alone. We will both have to do better.”

“I am grateful for your mercy,” She replies after what feels like an appropriate pause, bowing her head and fighting to keep the smile out of her voice. “I hadn’t expected it to turn out this way, truth be told.”

“I’m glad it did,” He says, and she nearly laughs. “Understand that they will be watching you, though. They will not forgive you as easily. I think it would be best for you to correct whatever damage you did to Fire Spirit.”

“That was done through Moonlight,” She admits. She no longer needs to keep secrets- sharing them now might, in fact, make him more inclined to believe that she truly is repenting. “I will release her, and she can undo the magic she placed upon him, but we must wake her first.”

“Sea Fairy will be able to do that,” He says, and stands and turns away from her and towards Sea Fairy, and he makes his final, fatal mistake of letting her go.

She steps away from the tree- and mutters a spell to kill it, for good measure- and in the same breath summons another of the clawed hands just behind Wind Archer, and before Sea Fairy can warn him, the hand closes around him, palm to his back and the razor edges of its claws digging into his throat and his chest and his stomach.

Millennial Tree turns to her, startled, as Sea Fairy rallies the last of her water behind her, preparing to strike at the hand.

“Fire a spell and the boy dies,” She says casually. One nail presses into Wind Archer’s stomach, and a pale yellow ichor oozes out of the wound, slow and thick like tree sap. “I don’t care what happens to him- he’s served his purpose. I’m really quite curious to know how one kills people like us.”

“You…” Millennial Tree stops, apparently unable to find the words he needs.

“Me,” She agrees, smiling. “Thousands of years of life and you’re still so  _ gullible _ , Tree. It’s charming, almost.”

Sea Fairy is about to send the full force of the gathering wave at her, but the hand digs its claws in deeper, and Wind Archer cries out as the ichor begins to run in little rivers down his arms.

“Do not think to test my honesty, Sea Fairy. You’ll quickly find that you don’t like the results.”

“I would have killed you,” Sea Fairy spits, as much to Millennial Tree as to her. “I would have thrown you to the ocean and let you rot. You are a vile thing worthy of no one’s memory, not even the earth’s.”

“It’s a shame you allowed the old tree to speak for you, then,” She says cheerfully.

“Enchantress, that is quite enough of this-”

“I’ll hear nothing from you, Millennial Tree. You have said your piece. Kneel, the both of you, or I’ll tear him apart like a rag doll and leave him for you to clean up.”

Neither of them seem willing to try her this time, not when the hand is using Wind Archer like a pincushion, and both of them obey.

“Sea Fairy, must I take that sword, or will you behave yourself?”

Sea Fairy, who had been in the middle of murmuring something, pales as she looks up, fear written plainly in her face. “I will keep it,” She says icily, holding it close to her chest. 

She turns back to Millennial Tree, who’s watching her with an unreadable expression, though he’s stiff as a board as he kneels before her.

“You made a good point, Tree,” She says. “It really did not have to come to this. If only you had done better. If only you had killed me when you had the chance.”

“Enchantress-”

The second hand, which had been laying limply several yards behind him the whole time, rises to strike him in the back, unbalancing him so that he falls to his hands and knees.

“Do not speak unless I give you permission,” She snaps. “And do not address me with such familiarity. You are not my equal, and you never shall be, if I choose to allow you to keep your life.”

“You have lost yourself,” He says despite her warning, and the hand shoves him down to the ground. “You are not who you used to be.”

“You are a blind old fool,” She says, suddenly furious, and the hand slams down beside his head and cracks the antler at the base, so that it’s hanging on by barely a splinter. He must feel that, must be hurt by it, but he gives no indication as he struggles to push himself back up onto his knees. “In that you have never changed. You have never  _ grown _ , Tree, and now you will not have the opportunity.”

“I don’t believe that you will do this, Enchantress. You will not follow through.”

“Is that a challenge, Tree? Why are you so certain that I will spare you? Why would  _ you _ mean anything to me?”

“I meant something to you once,” He reminds her gently. “I have proof of that. And you have the proof that you meant something to me.”

“That was forever ago, Tree,” She sneers. “It means nothing now.”

“Perhaps not to you, but it means something to me. You were my dearest friend from the beginning, Enchantress. I loved you. Is this truly what you want?”

The question and the sudden sentiment unsettle her, and she pauses to gather her thoughts, and she’s about to reply when the forest begins to shake.

She’s prepared to strike him down then so he can’t attack, but he looks just as baffled, and Sea Fairy and Wind Archer don’t seem to know what’s going on, either.

A powerful wind buffets the clearing, but Wind Archer is still restrained and still under her control, so he can’t be doing anything, and then a second later a massive shadow falls over them, and within a minute of this beginning, a huge red dragon is touching down on the opposite side of the clearing.

They look different now, more mature- they hardly have any green left to their scales, and their horns and mane have filled out, and they’ve bulked up and gathered an impressive collection of scars- but nonetheless she knows them to be Pitaya, the fabled Red Dragon, the one and only deity who had refused to join them in their pantheon.

“Pitaya,” Millennial Tree breathes, both surprised and somehow gratified at their appearance. 

She turns to scowl at Millennial Tree. “Did you call them here?”

He stares back at her, expressionless. “Twice I asked them for help and twice they refused me.”

“I am called by no one,” Pitaya growls from across the clearing, folding their wings against their sides. They aren’t speaking, exactly- their mouth doesn’t move- but rather projecting their thoughts outwards. “I decided to investigate the tree’s claims, and not a moment too soon, it seems. What are you doing, witch?”

Millennial Tree starts to speak, and she brings the hand down on him again, its longest claw piercing his chest. It won’t kill him, not unless she makes a special effort, but it will keep him down and give her leverage against the rest of her potential opponents if they try to attack her again.

“I should like to know what he told you to bring you here. I was under the impression that our petty affairs were beneath you.”

“I am under no obligation to answer you, witch.”

“All the same I am curious.”

Pitaya huffs as they settle into the empty lake bed, the damp soil steaming as they lay upon it, and a cloud of greenish smoke puffs out from their nostrils. “Answer my question and I shall answer yours.”

She considers this for a moment. “I am taking charge,” She answers. “I will not be subject to the limits someone else puts upon me, nor will I be made to feel like I am somehow wrong for exercising the power given to me. Surely you, the dragon of the valley, can appreciate that.”

“I appreciate that,” Pitaya agrees, laying their head on their front talons to look at her critically. “That is why I never joined you here. But you came with the tree to speak to me. Why now do you turn against him?”

“Answer my question before I answer yours.”

Pitaya’s tail thumps heavily against the ground, and the clearing shakes again. “He told me that he feared for the safety of his companions, and for the safety of the rest of this land as a consequence. I did not believe him the first time and did not want to be bothered- I was more interested in a tribe of little humans that had come to settle in my valley. I told him I would burn those sticks off of his head if he pestered me again. Then he came back and begged my help once more, and I turned him away and told him that I would strip the hide from his back the next time he presumed to intrude on my territory.”

Despite herself, she smiles. “I think this would have been over sooner if you had made good on your word.”

“That is true. But I was otherwise occupied and did not want to waste my time on someone who was no threat to me. Him I could burn to charcoal with a sneeze. You and the lady of the water, I do not know. And he said something that did concern me, and that is what I came to see, so I will revise my question: where is my boy? I will see him at once.”

“Fire Spirit is incapacitated at the moment.”

“I will see him,” Pitaya repeats, lashing their tail against the ground again. “He is a boy of temper, this I know, but I will see him. It is not my place to interfere in conflict which does not concern me, so I will not intervene in this fight, but he will return to the valley with me. There he will not risk involvement in this.”

“I’m afraid that he’s unable to-”

“Do not refuse me,” They warn her, rising to their feet, a growl rippling through their chest. “Bring him here or I will find him myself, even if I must tear apart everything here to do so.”

“He’s in the temple,” Sea Fairy tells them before Dark Enchantress can say anything, and Pitaya turns their head to stare at her. “But she speaks truly, Pitaya. He won’t be able to come out. I can show you where to look if you tell her not to act against me.”

Pitaya huffs again, and this time a thin spout of pink flame shoots from their nose to singe the grass in front of them. “Show me,” They tell her, and then, to Dark Enchantress: “Harm or impede the lady and I will crush you underfoot. Do not take my threats lightly.”

Really, she doesn’t care- they’ve already asserted that they just want to take Fire Spirit and leave, and that’s less work for her- so she watches as Sea Fairy stands, sword in hand, and walks with a slow, tired grace to the side of the temple, and stops at the approximate location of Fire Spirit’s room.

“He’ll be around here,” She tells them. “Get to him however you must, but be careful not to let the roof fall in. He is in no state to protect himself.”

Pitaya’s expression darkens, and they stomp over to where Sea Fairy stands, and with surprising gentleness they extend a wing to usher Sea Fairy off to the side.

“You will be safest with distance,” They say, and without further ado they rear back and slam the wall of the temple with both of their forelegs.

The blow is made with such shocking precision that only the middle section of the wall cracks and falls to pieces; the roof, though it shakes violently, stays in place, and the rest of the temple is relatively unharmed. They sit back on their hind legs and extend their neck inside and, after a second of tremendous effort, push a large section of the roof up, breaking it away from the rest of the structure and shrugging it off their head and onto the ground as if it weighed nothing.

Their confusion is evident as they lean back inside, nosing around the room, and after a moment they must come across the bed, because they sniff at it and recoil sharply as if bitten. 

“What is…” They lay down among the rubble of the broken wall, the stone crunching underneath their weight. “Fire Spirit? Stop playing around and get up, boy. You are coming home with me.” When they get no response, they nudge the bed with great care. “Fire Spirit. This is not time for your jokes.” They sit back up and turn, suddenly, to glare at Sea Fairy, a fire in their eyes. “What is wrong with him? Why is he gray? Where is the flame? Where is my bead?”

“Ask the witch,” Sea Fairy replies gently. “We do not know. She does.”

Pitaya stands and shakes the dust from their scales, and in a single leap covers the distance from the temple to stand before Dark Enchantress, their landing shaking the ground and nearly causing her to fall. 

They tower over her, but they bend their neck until their head is level with hers, the smoke roiling from their nostrils burning her eyes. “What,” They say slowly, deliberately, “Have you done to my boy?”

“A question for a question,” She says innocently, her gaze never wavering.

She hardly knows what’s happening before they have her pinned under one of their talons, claws stabbing into her arms and chest, and they lower their face until their mouth is inches from her throat, teeth bared in a snarl.

“No more games, witch,” They growl. “Your answer or your life.”

“This is hardly fair play,” She complains, a fake pout on her face. 

They hiss, and their mouth opens to an unnaturally wide angle, and a gout of pink fire erupts from their throat.

She would have been incinerated there and then had she not been able to summon a barrier- as it is she’s sweating, trapped between the ground and the rapidly melting wall, and her shield is nearly gone before Pitaya relents to take a breath, the scales of their neck glowing white-hot. 

“The conflict concerns me now,” Pitaya says, digging their claws in deeper. “I will tear you apart, witch, and burn what remains. My patience is worn thin.”

She grits her teeth as their claws dig into her skin, drawing blood. “I have done nothing to him.”

“But you are the cause,” They hiss. Something black and thick drips from their mouth- an aftereffect of the fire, perhaps- and lands on her arm, and where it touches it burns her like nothing she’s ever felt before, and it’s nearly impossible to keep her composure. “You will repair the damage you have done, and then perhaps I will not gut you and leave you for the birds.”

“But of course,” She replies, as sweetly as she can with her arm in such pain. “If you would be so kind as to let me up…”

They make a noise that sounds like a laugh. “I am not so gullible. You smell of treachery, witch, and I will not be made a fool of.”

She forces herself to relax completely in their grip, as though disappointed and resigned, and she sighs heavily. “If you won’t let me go to him, I’ll need a moment to gather my strength, dragon. Even my abilities are limited.”

“Mind your behavior,” They tell her, obviously suspicious of her immediate compliance. “And see that we do not have any unfortunate  _ accidents _ , or you will have a long and painful accident of your own.” 

“I understand perfectly,” She says, and with a burst of strength summons a long spike of dark crystal that lances them through the foreleg.

They roar so loudly that she loses her hearing for a second, and they stumble backwards to keep their weight off the injured leg, and they send a burst of flame at where she had been laying just a moment ago, but she’s already well out of their way behind a thick magical barrier.

“I will pull you apart limb from limb,” They snarl, flapping their wings once to propel themselves at her, but she summons another spike angled at their chest, and at the last second they manage to divert their course to crash headlong into one of the trees.

They shake their head as they stand, their horns rending the bark as they pull them out of the wood, and they circle her, sizing her up.

“You will tire soon,” They say, tasting the air with their tongue. “I will not. I am made for this- I am built for combat.” They shake their wounded leg, and their blood, thin and mercury-silver, spatters the grass, sizzling where it lands. “You will not know my mercy, witch, so know this: when finally you cast your last spell and fall exhausted, I will be there to do to you thousandfold what you have done to me, and you will not know rest nor calm nor peace until your final breath.”

She doesn’t dignify their threats with a response, partly because in her heart she knows they’re right: she hadn’t accounted for having to subdue the dragon, and she’s already worn down from maintaining her hold on Wind Archer and keeping Millennial Tree pinned. If she’s going to succeed she has to do so quickly, and if they land even a single blow on her she’ll be lost.

They back off and rise on their hind legs, beating their wings, and she knows that if they take to the air then she’ll be at a tremendous disadvantage. With great effort she’s able to form another hand, this one larger than all the ones preceding it, and though Pitaya snaps at it and manages to tear a finger from it, she manages to slip it past them, and she’s able to shred the base of their wing membrane with it before they fall to the side and lash out at it with their tail, slamming it to the ground and shattering it into dozens of pieces.

“Underhanded,” They bellow, staggering to their feet, their injured wing extended awkwardly to the side. “Cowardly, yellow, clawless little wretch- abandon your sorcery and fight me properly! Let us see who you are without your pitiful tricks!”

She does no such thing, of course, but gathers what strength she has left as they prowl the clearing, crouched low to the ground, uninjured wing spread and tail raised to keep their balance. They’re still limping, but their resolve is unshaken, and she barely manages to dodge when they lunge suddenly at her, neck poised to bite and crush her. As they pass and begin to turn to chase her, she strikes out with a new hand- likely the last she’ll be able to summon before her power fails her- and hears a loud snap as the bone in their hind leg cracks (but doesn’t break, to her chagrin).

Again they roar, their fury boiling over as they turn with more agility than she’d ever expect of them, and their tail whips at her faster than she can properly react to. In a last ditch effort she summons a tall, thin shard of crystal and falls behind it, knowing it’s inadequate to shield her but still holding onto a desperate hope.

She waits for a blow that doesn’t come; she hears a tearing sound, and then something like a knife being stabbed into a block of wood, and when she opens her eyes, half of their tail is on the ground many yards away, silver blood dripping from the stump where it was severed and scorching the earth where it lays.

She stands, incredulous, and looks to where Pitaya had been only moments ago, and sees nothing but a cloud of smoke large enough to consume a dragon, and the clearing is quiet.

For a minute she stands there, weak but triumphant, reveling in the looks of shock and horror on each of the others’ faces.

Then the ground shakes again.

Out of the cloud of smoke emerges a figure, taller than she is by half and built far sturdier, and clad in a full set of deep red armor with a helmet covered in familiar curved horns. Their eyes are the same deep black as the dragon’s, their pupils thin slits of white, and sprouting from their back is a pair of wings (one folded against them, the other bent away from them). A stunted tail is peeking out from behind them as well, but it’s missing its lower half, and the skin (scales?) around the stump are beginning to turn green as the wound seals itself over.

Pitaya looks even angrier, now.

“What is  _ thisss _ ?” They demand, their voice a raspy hiss- this time they’re really physically speaking, and clearly the action is foreign and uncomfortable. “What sssorcery have you wrought?”

She takes an unsteady step backwards, suddenly afraid. She doesn’t have the strength left for another battle; she hardly has the strength to keep her hold on the other deities.

“I did not change your form,” She says, willing her voice not to shake. “I could not tell you how that happened.”

“Well,” They say, biting off the word, “It ssseems to me that I have been given a sssecond chance. I will not be ssso easy a target.”

They take another step forward and seem to stumble a little, flinging their wings out to catch themselves.

“It isss unfortunate,” They hiss, taking another cautious step forward. “I mussst acquaint myssself with a two-legged form. But I wonder…”

They draw in a long breath, and she realizes too late what they’re doing- she tries to duck a second too late, and though she isn’t very close to them, their fire singes her head, and the brief moment of pain is enough to make her lapse in her spell.

It’s brief, but it’s enough, and Wind Archer falls to the ground, freed from his bondage, and behind her Millennial Tree is rising to his feet, golden ichor leaking from his chest. He hardly has to blink before a tangle of brambles rises to tie her down, forcing her to the ground, and she’s too tired and utterly spent to try to resist.

“I will hold her,” He says to Pitaya, his voice rough. “Attend to Fire Spirit.”

“I made a promissse,” Pitaya snarls, taking one more shaky step forward. “I will kill her. She will not sssurvive to do thisss again.”

“We will keep her alive until we know Fire Spirit can recover. If we cannot figure out how to fix him, she will be able to help.”

Pitaya spits something black and thick that withers the grass it touches. “I would not trussst that witch to help, even under threat of death.”

“Even so we should wait. It is better to be safe than sorry.”

“ _ Sssafe _ ?” Pitaya snorts derisively, smoke blowing from their nose. “We are passst that. And you are already sssorry, twig, and you shall be even more sssorry if we cannot help my boy.”

“I am sure it will not come to that,” Millennial Tree says, but he looks uncertain.

He offers Pitaya his shoulder to lean on, but they refuse; instead they reach up, and in a quick movement they tear off the half of his antler that’s currently dangling by a thin strand, the one she’d broken earlier. He flinches but says nothing as Pitaya brings it to their mouth and blows a stream of fire over it, and when all that’s left in their hand is ashes, they blow those to the wind.

“Underssstand the ssstakes,” Pitaya growls, and with some effort they stalk off towards the hole in the wall of the temple.

Millennial Tree stands there for a moment, staring dumbly, and then follows, without a glance back in her direction.

Sea Fairy is sitting with Wind Archer, laying him down and admonishing him to rest and not make his injuries any worse, but she turns to watch as Pitaya steps into the ruined room of the temple, and a moment later they come back out with Fire Spirit cradled in their arms.

He’s hardly recognizable, his hair no longer flaming and his skin a washed-out grayish-brown, and his eyes look sunken as Pitaya suddenly drops to the ground, laying him across their lap.

“Boy,” They say gently, this time with affection and not impatience. “What has gotten into you? Why do you lay there ssstill while the ressst of them fight?”

“He hardly speaks,” Millennial Tree warns them. “We’ve tried, but…”

“Be sssilent, twig. My boy will anssswer me.”

There’s a long, tense moment of silence.

“No point,” Fire Spirit answers, finally, and Pitaya frowns. 

“What is  _ that _ sssupposed to mean? Put your head on ssstraight, boy, and ssstand up.”

Fire Spirit shakes his head. “I’m cold, ‘Taya.”

Finally Pitaya looks properly alarmed: they spread their wings to keep the breeze off of him, though it’s obvious that the action hurts their injured wing, hunching over him to keep him as sheltered as they can, and they lay a hand on his forehead and almost immediately pull it back.

“What happened?” They demand, not so much angry as panicked. “How did thisss- where is my bead? Have you lossst it, foolish boy?”

“It’s in there,” He replies, with a vague gesture towards the temple. “Didn’t help, though.”

“Foolish,” Pitaya repeats, as though they don’t know what else to say. “You mussst come home- you will feel better once you are in the valley, you mussst heal there-”

“I won’t make it there, ‘Taya. C’mon. You’re not dumb. You can see that.”

“You will,” They insist, but when they attempt to stand with him, part of his cape falls away black and dry, and it crumbles to lifeless ashes on the ground. 

“It’s fine, ‘Taya. At least you’re here.”

Pitaya rumbles low in their throat, a noise that’s somewhere between a purr and a growl. “Twig,” They say sharply, “Bring me his ssstaff, and do not drag your feet.”

“It will burn me,” Millennial Tree tells them, but complies nonetheless, stepping carefully through the debris to find Fire Spirit’s staff.

“We will fix thisss,” Pitaya tells Fire Spirit, brushing a hand down Fire Spirit’s head as if smoothing down his hair, and their hand comes away streaked with black ash. “Ssstay,” They say, wiping their hand on the grass, clearly distressed. “Do not fade or I will drop you into the volcano and make you ssswim back.”

“It’s fine. Really.” He doesn’t appear fazed as the breeze blows more of his cape to ash.

Pitaya, though, turns their head to glare at Wind Archer, who’s still laying bleeding on the ground, although it appears that his condition is stable.

“You,” Pitaya barks, and Wind Archer looks at them through bleary eyes. “Get your wind under control before you sssuffer the sssame fate as the witch.”

“He’s only just coming to,” Sea Fairy says softly, her tone carefully controlled. “That isn’t his doing.”

“You would do well to be cautiousss. I will not repeat myssself.”

“You sound dumb.”

Pitaya, startled, looks down at Fire Spirit, who’s smiling weakly up at them. “What did you sssay?”

“I  _ sssaid _ you sound dumb. You’re like a snake now.”

Affectionately, Pitaya says: “Boy, if you were not hurt I would grab you by your ssstupid little neck and shake you until you could not sssee.”

Millennial Tree comes back out, then, Fire Spirit’s black iron staff in his hands, and he lays it carefully beside him. “The staff itself is cold to the touch. The… bead?... seems normal, though.”

“Of courssse it is,” Pitaya snarls, apparently offended by this. “But you would not underssstand, twig. Give it here.”

They take the staff and effortlessly snap two of the prongs anchoring the bead in place, pulling out the little round gem and holding it in their palm, testing its temperature.

“You broke it,” Fire Spirit complains, looking ruefully at his ruined staff.

“I will hit you over your ridiculousss head with it if you do not ssstop whining at me.”

“What are you going to do with it?” Millennial Tree asks, and Pitaya’s half-tail thumps the ground in frustration.

“If you do not leave me to my businesssss,” They hiss, flaring their wings, and a tiny lick of flame sparks in their mouth as they lisp. “I will ssstrip your hide as well, twig. Do not think me above it, after what your ineptitude has causssed.”

“Leave him alone,” Fire Spirit protests. “You’re being mean.”

“Being  _ mean  _ has sssaved me on many occasions. You would have ssseen that if you had only ssstayed in the valley, but you went running off, and now look at what has happened to you. I should not have let you leave,” Pitaya adds after a pause, and there’s something heavy in their voice.

“You couldn’t have stopped me.”

“I would have sssat on you if it meant keeping you sssafe, you idiot boy.”

Despite his condition, Fire Spirit laughs. And then his laugh devolves into a shallow, dry cough, and what’s left of the fire on his head crumbles into soot on Pitaya’s leg, and he goes quiet.

Pitaya panics then, and without thinking they draw in the deepest breath their lungs will allow and expel it in a burst of fire so hot it’s almost entirely white, tinged with pink and green at the very fringes.

The foliage around them practically evaporates in the inferno, and Millennial Tree has to retreat back to Sea Fairy, who’s using her very limited supply of water to make sure that Wind Archer isn’t burned in the ambient heat, and even from where she’s laying across the clearing, Dark Enchantress begins to sweat profusely.

Pitaya sustains it for nearly a full minute, the full power of it directed onto Fire Spirit, and she’s sure that Fire Spirit must be dead now, and she wonders whether Pitaya did it to put him out of his misery.

But Pitaya finally stops, chest heaving as they pant from the exertion, and Fire Spirit is laying in their lap glowing cherry-red like a hot coal or an iron in the forge.

“Air,” Pitaya breathes, and then seems to regain their senses, and they turn to Wind Archer. “Give the boy air! Are you trying to ssstarve him?”

Wind Archer is now in a decent enough condition to sit up, though he leans heavily against Millennial Tree as he does, and after gathering all his strength he’s able to summon a small breeze. It’s weak and uncontrolled, but it seems to do the job, and the cracks that run through Fire Spirit’s body seem to heal together as he begins to glow brighter.

“He will be fine,” Pitaya says, relieved, slumping over his body, unaffected by the heat. “It will take sssome time for his mind to recover. For a creature born of the fire he is not very bright sssometimes.”

The glow is still growing in intensity, though, and it surpasses his normal color and temperature, and after a moment Pitaya straightens up, nudging Fire Spirit gently in the side.

“Boy, get yourssself under control. It will be days before I can breathe fire after that, ssso do not expect another boossst if you burn yourssself out again.”

Fire Spirit lets out a long breath and slowly pushes himself to sit on his own, but it’s immediately apparent that something isn’t right: he’s still getting brighter, fanned by the breeze, and where he had been laying near death just a moment ago he now looks fully alert and, somehow, excited.

“Fire Ssspirit?”

“Yeah?”

Pitaya pushes him- gently- with their uninjured wing. “What are you doing, boy? Get yourssself ssstable.”

“What d’ya mean?” He pushes away from Pitaya to stand up, and when he tries to pick up his staff it glows white and melts in his hands, dripping to the ground. “Huh. Is it hot over here or is it just me?”

“Ssstop playing around,” Pitaya snaps, getting to their feet (after losing their balance for a second). “I have had enough gamesss today.”

“I’m not playing.” He starts to walk towards the empty lakebed, glowing brighter with each step he takes, the ground burning under his feet. The fuel in turn makes him even brighter, and by the time he gets to the lakebed, the whole of him is aflame with fire so bright and hot that he’s painful even to look at. “Really, ‘Taya, is it a heat wave or somethin’? It’s hot. Really hot.” He looks down at his hands and laughs humorlessly. “That’s not normal, huh? I bet I’m even hotter than you.”

“Sssettle down,” Pitaya says, taking an uneasy step towards him. “You have limitsss. Ssstop trying to outdo me or you will hurt yourssself.”

“Well, mission accomplished,” He says, and laughs that fake laugh again. “I mean, ouch. Is this what normal people feel touching fire? No wonder no one would come near me.”

“Come here, boy,” Pitaya says, their scowl a thin disguise for their fear. “Come here, you… come here and ssstop being ridiculousss.”

“I don’t think I can.” Again he laughs. “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t come near me, huh? I’m so hot I’m burning myself! Isn’t that ironic?”

“I am a dragon. Your sssilly little flamesss cannot hurt me. Come here or you will make me embarasss myssself walking.”

“Nah, I think I’ll stay over here, actually! The breeze is nice, don’t you think?”

Pitaya makes a frustrated noise and looks back expectantly at the three deities watching behind them.

“No more wind,” They growl, fear in their eyes. “Was that not obviousss? You are only feeding his nonsssenssse. He mussst cool down or he will burn out, and I cannot rekindle him again so sssoon.”

“I can help,” Sea Fairy suggests. “I have a little bit of water left… If I used it carefully perhaps I could stop it.”

“Do you want to  _ extinguish  _ him?” Pitaya demands incredulously. “Are you trying to kill him like the witch?”

“I doubt that I even have enough water to do that, in his state,” Sea Fairy replies, a little testily. “I am trying to help him, Pitaya. I want him to be safe as much as you do.”

Pitaya lets out a long breath and looks back at Fire Spirit, who’s entertaining himself by investigating his new cape, which is pure white fire and is currently setting fire to the bushes in the clearing.

“You watch your every ssstep,” They hiss. “Do only what you mussst to ensure his sssafety.”

Fire Spirit watches as the two of them approach, looking between Sea Fairy and Pitaya, a smile on his face but mounting fear in his eyes. “Hey, what’re you up to? What’s  _ she _ doing?”

“Come here, boy. My leg and my wings hurt too badly for me to chassse you.”

Fire Spirit takes a step back. “‘Taya? I’m serious, ‘Taya, what’s she doing?”

“Helping you,” Pitaya says, and lunges before Fire Spirit can try to flee, bolstering their jump with a flap of their wings. Pitaya grimaces, their torn wing in agony, but they manage to tackle him to the ground, keeping him in place despite his wild flailing.

“‘Taya, c’mon, ‘Taya, what’re you doing, is she gonna put me out? Why are you letting her do this, ‘Taya, why are you helping her? Don’t you love me? Did I do something? ‘Taya, tell her to back off-”

“Ssstop,” Pitaya barks, pushing him down more firmly, though every muscle in their body is tense and their throat feels just as tight. “ _ Quickly _ , lady, or he will burn the both of usss to husksss.”

Pitaya’s armor begins to smoke where Fire Spirit touches them, and within seconds it begins to melt, little glassy red drops dripping down their chest as he tries with all his might to push them away.

“‘Taya, ‘Taya, let me up, c’mon-”

“I am not going to put you out,” Sea Fairy says gently, kneeling beside him and laying her hands on the ground. “I am going to cool you off. I care for you, Fire Spirit. You must trust me.”

“I knew this was going to happen,” Fire Spirit says, his voice high with panic. “I knew you were gonna do this, I knew you were gonna put me out, I never shoulda-”

Pitaya pushes him more firmly against the ground despite the growing heat against their chest. “I would not let her do that,” They tell him. “You will be okay, boy, and that is a promissse. But you mussst not fight us.”

Still Fire Spirit struggles against them as Sea Fairy draws upon what little water remains beneath the lakebed.

“I will have to use the water all at once or it will simply evaporate,” Sea Fairy murmurs. “Promise me that you will not act against me without thinking, Pitaya.”

Pitaya turns a furious glare on her. “Why mussst I give oath, lady? Surely you cannot think to betray me-”

“It will look worse than it is at first, if all goes well. I am not asking you not to act, for I know it is not my place, only that you wait and observe first.”

Pitaya looks away from her, down at Fire Spirit, a concerned scowl darkening their features. 

“Two minutesss,” They mutter. “Beyond that I shall not wait. And I am an excellent judge of time.”

“That is all I ask.”

Without giving warning, she calls forth all of the water she’s managed to get hold of, pulling it up from the ground and pushing it all onto Fire Spirit, and even Pitaya has to stop themselves from flinching at the sheer amount of it. Perhaps it pales in comparison to how much was in the lake originally, but it would have been enough to douse Fire Spirit completely in his normal state, and as it is it causes them serious discomfort. Still it seems like little against Fire Spirit’s current form, and the water sizzles and turns to steam as it touches him.

Fire Spirit is yelling and sputtering and begging Pitaya to help him all the while, but Pitaya grits their teeth and holds him still as the water keeps coming.

It feels never ending, but in reality Sea Fairy has been calling forth the water for perhaps thirty seconds before she sits backwards, tired and spent. She’s even given some of the water that makes up her hair and dress- her hair now hardly reaches her shoulders, and her dress is knee-length- and she gestures towards Fire Spirit, who’s laying quiet and dull once more.

“Remember your words,” She says when they release their hold on him, reaching for her instead, but she makes no move to get out of their reach. “Let him have the breeze again, Pitaya. Step away.”

“Two minutesss,” They remind her, and reluctantly they step away from Fire Spirit to sit in the dirt, nursing their burnt hands. “Ssstupid boy is going to kill  _ me _ at thisss rate.”

For a terrifying half a minute, Fire Spirit doesn’t change; he looks just as he did before Pitaya rekindled him, and Pitaya gets increasingly restless, glancing between him and Sea Fairy.

Then, finally, the wind seems to help- little sparks begin to come to life, and slowly they spread, fanned by the breeze, until his whole body starts glowing and a weak little fire starts on the top of his head.

The two minutes are nearly up when he takes in a sharp breath and sits up as if waking from a nightmare, still dimmer than usual but quickly regaining his normal appearance.

“‘Taya?” He asks, dazed, standing up unsteadily. “What was  _ that _ ?”

Pitaya gets up too, and for a second they look like they’re going to knock him senseless, but they gather him into their arms, nearly crushing him in the hug, and he makes a strangled noise.

“What’s gotten into  _ you _ ?” He asks, slapping uselessly at Pitaya’s back. “Let me go, you oaf, you’re gonna split me in half!”

“Ssstupid boy,” Pitaya hisses, wiping something away from their eye that looks suspiciously like a tear. “You had them ssscared.”

“Just them? No one else?”

“I was ssserious about the volcano. I will ssstill drop you in.”

Fire Spirit just then seems to notice Pitaya’s injuries, and he struggles out of their hold to hold their torn wing gently in his hands.

“Are you okay? What happened? I didn’t even ask why you’re not… you know. A dragon.”

“The witch decided that she wanted to challenge me. You can sssee how that turned out. I am ssstill ssstanding and she is not.” Pitaya turns to Millennial Tree, who’s sitting beside Wind Archer with his head in his lap. “You,” They snap, and he looks up, evidently startled. “I will not wassste my time on your witch. You go finish your businesss, and sssee that it does not affect me or my boy again.”

Sea Fairy goes back to the two of them and takes charge of Wind Archer, letting him lay his head on her shoulder as they sit together. “Go do what you must,” She tells Millennial Tree, and she must see the conflict he’s having with himself, because she reaches up to take his hand. “Everything is fine now. I will bring Wind Archer in to wake Moonlight, and Pitaya will have their eye on Fire Spirit.”

“I know, but…”

She squeezes his hand. “You must end this. She has had her chances, Tree, more than she ever deserved. To forgive her again would be to turn away from the rest of us, after what she has done.”

Sighing, he lets go of her hand, and with a slight limp he approaches Dark Enchantress. With his broken antler and the gashes in his chest, he looks reduced, tired, but he still comes to stand in front of her with poise, maybe because he knows she resents it.

She’s still trapped, still exhausted, but in the time that they had been fussing over Fire Spirit she’d managed to recover enough for one last spiteful act: maybe some great, inspired act of magic or medicine could have rejoined the two halves of Pitaya’s tail, but she’d used her final spell to send it somewhere far from here and further still from their valley. She hadn’t had enough strength to destroy it completely, but she can deny it to them- even if their wing and their legs heal and the scars fade, they’ll still remember her by their half-tail, and she’ll still have some semblance of victory.

Millennial Tree glances over at the stain of silver blood where their tail had been laying. “You are not helping your case any,” He says, and he sounds unimaginably sad. “Was that necessary, Enchantress? Was any of this?”

“I had you, Tree. You must give me that. If it hadn’t been for Pitaya’s meddling, you would never have succeeded.”

“You had me,” Millennial Tree admits, and he sits beside her, near her head but too far away for her to touch, even if she were able to break out of the roots. Golden sap stains his robe where his chest is cut. “But you don’t anymore.”

She lets her head fall back against the grass and closes her eyes. “I was close, though. Very close.” She chuckles. “And to think I got out of it almost unscathed. It’s really a shame they had to come along and ruin things, Tree. We could have had fun.”

“Somehow I think our ideas of  _ fun  _ wouldn’t have lined up. I don’t take pleasure in any of this, Enchantress. Even now I regret what comes next.” 

“What, you can’t savor your victory? I would, in your shoes, so don’t look so glum.”

He gives her a strange look. “Aren’t you upset?”

“Of course I am. Don’t you know  _ anything  _ about me?” She pauses. “Well, maybe you don’t. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“You were furious not long ago.”

“I understand what’s going to become of me, and I’ve done all the fighting I can. Even if you kill me I will die knowing I’ve left my mark.”

He sighs, laying his hand flat on the ground, and a little dandelion sprouts between his fingers. “I don’t want to kill you, Enchantress.” 

Despite her predicament, she bursts out laughing. “You really are a fool,” She says, and he frowns. “After all of this, Tree? Really? You’re even denser than I thought, and that’s saying something.”

“I don’t believe it’s foolish to not want to harm someone who was once a friend. Your cruelty is not mine. And I didn’t say that you wouldn’t face any consequences.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” She says with mock enthusiasm, shifting uncomfortably in her bonds. “It was really quite inconsiderate of you to leave me here like this. The ground isn’t exactly comfortable.”

“Being impaled and left to bleed wasn’t what I would call comfortable either.”

“Point taken.”

He glances back at Sea Fairy, who’s helping a limping Wind Archer back to the temple. “Certainly you can’t stay here, regardless of what I choose to do with you.”

“So you’re just going to send me away?” She shrugs, though the movement is awkward when she’s being held down. “You know I’ll be back.”  
“There’s more to it than that. I am going to attempt… Well, maybe I ought to try it before I tell you.”

Some of the roots holding her begin to split, half of them continuing to restrain her while the other half grow down and out, forming intricate patterned knots where they meet. She can’t see all of it, but it looks to be forming a ring around her, and after studying the patterns for a second she realizes that he’s weaving some kind of magic circle.

“I was developing this to try to free Wind Archer and Moonlight from whatever you had done to them,” He explains, carefully guiding the last branch into place. “But obviously I never had the chance to test it. Hopefully it will have the intended effect on you.”

The branches that still hold her grow inwards, their tips pushing into her stomach, her chest, her neck, enough to be extremely uncomfortable but not quite enough to cause her any pain, not unless she moves. He starts mumbling something under his breath, and maybe fatigue has her hallucinating, but the ground inside the ring starts glowing a pale spring green, building in intensity until everything around her is just a wash of white light.

She can’t see anything, can’t hear anything anymore, but she can distantly feel the branches prodding her, and everywhere she feels that pressure it feels like something is being taken from her. It’s impossible for her to say what it is- she only knows that it’s part of her, something that’s been in her since the beginning, something so integral that she hadn’t noticed it had a feeling to it until she’d begun to lose it.

It doesn’t last long, and when the glow fades she feels emptied and wrong but not  _ hurt _ , and she turns a confused look on Millennial Tree.

He studies her quietly for a moment and then nods, stiff with exhaustion. “I think that will do,” He murmurs.

“What is it?” She asks, unnerved. “What did you take from me?”

“Your godhood,” He tells her, and he allows the roots to unwind, including the ones holding her down. 

She tries to stand and finds herself too weak even to sit up, and she lays there helplessly, glaring at him as he looks back at her with obvious pity.

“You’re a liar, Tree. You don’t have that kind of power.”

“It was a difficult spell to construct,” He admits. “There were so many unknowns to contend with… many times I nearly gave up. Ultimately I designed it to alter time in a specific way, to be able to push something into a past or future state, hoping I could use that to undo your magic. And now I see it has even more uses than that, but that’s for another day, I suppose. Now I can send you away without worrying about your whereabouts.”

“You’re just going to cast me off like that? Just going to forget about me, then?”

“I don’t think we can,” He says, gently, as her vision begins to dim. “But all the same we are going to try.”

And that’s the last thing he ever says to her.


End file.
